He told it with great dramatic effect and the reaction was usually what he’d hoped. But he had to be reminded that the story had been making the rounds for a decade or more. “That’s exactly why I keep telling it,” he said. “At least people from those days will recall it. Everything else has been erased, suppressed, never happened. And there’s hardly a more vivid way to bring that time back to life, the Ice Age that sucked the marrow from your bones: a mixture of anxiety, fear, and lust . . .” “Lust?” his listeners would ask. “Yes, lust. Freedom that might even become blood lust. There was nothing left to keep people in check. No commandments, no restraints, nothing. Sheer, naked survival was the only thing that mattered. People could do whatever they wanted. Everything was permitted. No wonder they never caught the rubble murderer. Even if all his victims were killed in the same way, it doesn’t necessarily follow that there had been only one. What if the girl’s escort had just decided to try out the role? Put a wire loop in his pocket to see what would happen IF. . . Can’t you imagine the delicious curiosity to see just once what would happen if you cast off all inhibitions . . .”

•  •  •

THE BACKGROUND (BESSARABIA, 1940)

Uncle Ferdinand chats about the phenomenon of time:

“. . . people these days are all excited about relativity, especially the relativity of time discovered by that Jew, that Einstein fellow—well, it’s something all of us have experienced—for example, you’re at some event and bored to tears, so you disappear with the wife of another guest and spend a little while with her in an adjoining room—well, for you it was a nice quarter of an hour—right?—but for her husband—right?—who can feel his horns growing the whole time, it was an eternity. . .”